Triangles with a mind of their own

[SeventhOmen]

Some background. I am modifying a type 3 body (I know, not again). There were a few triangles that I needed to change to help the overall smoothness of the mesh. Now, when I UV unwrap, all the modified triangles want to use 3 corners of the UV grid, be very large, and NOT locate themselves in the correct spot in the unwrapped mesh. I have gotten my head around a lot of this mesh, texture, nifscope, etc process, but now I can finally say, "Im stumped". I have been unable to locate advice on the web for this issue.

Anyone have any ideas what I am missing?

 

Thanks in advance for any help,

SeventhOmen

[LHammonds]

Ok, so you've taken an existing model that has a UV map. You then add new verticies and are now having problems making the new faces "mesh" well with the existing UV map. Is this a correct assessment?

 

If so, you need to select just the faces you added, one at a time and unwrap using "project from view" when the camera is facing directly on it. Then select all the verts to show the entire UV map. Grab the UV you just created (should be just one triangle...3 verts) and size, rotate and position where it should "fit" into the original UV map.

 

This is a very manual process but necessary to not perturb the original UV / Texture for compatibility reasons.

 

Sometimes it is difficult to tell which corner of the UV goes where (is it upside down or rightside up?)...that is when I make a modification to the texture such as drawing a bright line through the area so I can tell how the faces are lining up with the new UV.

[SeventhOmen]

Thanks for the reply.

I did not add any new vertices. Think of a square with a line from top left to bottom right. All I did was change that diagonal line to the bottom left to top right. | \ | to | / | But, as a result of these changes, the 'triangles' do not appear in the unwrapped UV, but rather filling up on half of the "grid" that shows with the unwrapped UV. I did try to manually move the oddballs into place but with poor results. I will try once more following your suggestions.

 

Omen

[LHammonds]

All I did was change that diagonal line to the bottom left to top right. | \ | to | / |

which sounds like you deleted faces and added them back which is essentially the same thing. Whenever you see those HUGE triangles or squares on the UV image editor, it is telling you that you have unmapped UVs...basically, the faces are not associated to the texture and are not mapped out. So you will have to re-create the UVs for just those faces. But since you did not add additional geometry that wasn't already there, it should be relatively easy to fix...meaning there are places for those faces on the texture.

 

The very 1st thing you want to do is select all the vertices in the 3d view port which will show all the UVs on the UV image editor view port. Then click the arrow button on the right of the "UVs" menu item on the image editor (tool tip says "browse existing choices or ADD new") and re-select your models image from the pop-up list. This will re-assign the image to the unmapped UVs. This has to be done first before you do anything or the UVs will just appear white because they do not know what texture to display or where to display it.

 

After that is done, then you need to do the process I explained in the previous post.

 

LHammonds

[baduk]

Hi!

 

Ok i dont really know what your operation will do in the game. The model was originally created in quads and then it was triangulated and strippified on export.

So now you want to change the orientation of a set of triangles on a face that was originally a quad?

Ok so you deleted the faces and recreated them . Does this affect strippification? Maybe any performance loss from this modification is negligible. i really have no idea.

 

You can use this script to weld uvs back together once you have them positioned correctly. Please select only the uv vertices and the ones you want to join before using the script or you very well may end up welding your nipple uvs all together!

 

http://glender.hybird.org/

 

scrool down for uv tool. but u probly want to pick up some other scripts also especialy the geom tool.

[SeventhOmen]

"re-select your models image from the pop-up list"

Ok, I get the process, I think. But, the problem now becomes which would be the correct image as I have several. Some are named as "textures/characte.(Some number), or textures/shared/F.(some number). There is a textures/characte (without numbers) that I suspect is the correct one, but there is also a textures/characters/f. This has become quite the challenge, I hope I can see it through.

 

Omen

[SeventhOmen]

As I experiment with a copy, I also find that after I reassign I can not zoom into the image past a certain point. This will definitely not help when I get to the re-assimilation of the rogue vertices. Can I "turn off" the image assignment after I make it (using the 'X' that appears after making the required reassignment) and will it stick? In trying that, I was able to get in much closer to properly position the vertexes.

 

I also looked at the recommended tool to weld with, will that become a necessity? Again, in experiments, I noticed that an over lap of sorts is created when the unmapped vertices are relocated.

 

Thanks for all your help so far. i have a lot of time in this and I would just hate to throw it away due to something like this.

 

Omen

[baduk]

If you use the welding tool you wont have to zoom in so far to position the uv.

 

Just get it close enough and run the script but dont have the nipple area or other areas with tight vertex positioning selected, just have the uvs selected that you want to weld to each other.

 

The script will position the uvs on the same spot within the chosen threshhold.

[SeventhOmen]

Well, after spending my spare time over the course of this week, I GOT IT! The modified body is in game now. In testing, I see that there are a few things I need to 'clean up', but nothing that should cause me any issues.

Thank you so much for all your help here.

Now, to get some outfits that fit correctly...

 

Omen